Okay, this may be a horrible idea, but I just woke up, and it seems like a good idea now.

I turned on my computer, checked my torrent client, saw a wall full of Australian flags, and thought, “Australia, kick ass.”

I have no programming knowledge whatsoever, but what if someone out there were to make a torrent client that took your location from your IP address and slightly biased both your upload sources and your download destinations by geographical area, towards people living in countries currently at odds with your own?

Implementation and how much bias this algorithm shows t0 balance actually having an effect vs. adversely affecting efficiency is a discussion for another day, I just want to get the basic idea out there: get people in the mindframe of “maybe this country I hate isn’t *entirely* useless. At least they seed well.” It’s like the opposite of all those “cultural boycotts” we’ve been hearing about. Fight fire with goddamn water.

It’s not like torrents fuel a country’s economy: we wouldn’t be doing anything to actually make our enemies more dangerous. They’d be downloading these files anyway, so why not give them a reason to root for us while they’re at it?

3 Responses to BitTorrent: World Peace

This idea is crazy, and perverse to so many people, that it just might work. Do you mind this idea going Open Source, Fish? I can fwd this idea to the folks I know who either program, or are connected to the industry and would know more people who could run with this.

the only reason I can think of for it not taking off, is that it’s counter-intuitive for how solid file-sharing should work… good seeds should be as local as possible, the distance between peers as small as possible.

For the middle east and Europe, this won’t be too much of a conflict of goals. for North Americans… well, everything is far away from here, Allies and enemies.